The invention relates to a stuffing attachment for a continuously operating crinkling unit for continuous material, which has a compression tube with an axis which runs in a straight line in its starting zone and into which the continuous material is stuffed.
Crinkling units serve to impart preferably permannent crinkle-creases to continuous material, particularly textile material and, more particularly, velours and velvets, in order to give the continuous material a special appearance and enhance wearability. In a continuously-operating, compression-tube crinkling unit, a continuous strip of material is pressed through a perforated, warm water-immersed compression tube This randomly creases the continuous material inside the compression tube. The high temperature of the water compression tube causes the continuous material to take up the creases which are then fixed by feeding the material immediately thereafter into cold water.
A known stuffing attachment for pressing continuous strip material into the compression tube has a pair of delivery rollers and a short tubular nozzle. The strip passes through the delivery rollers and then through the tubular nozzle. The pair of delivery rollers and the tubular nozzle are pushed backwards and forwards along a straight-line axis of the compression tube to stuff the strip into the compression tube. This known stuffing attachment has the disadvantage that the continuous material may pile up immediately after the delivery rollers and wrap itself around the delivery rollers instead of passing through the nozzle. This, in turn, undesirably necessitates interrupting the operation.